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Ed Miliband, the former leader of the UK Labour Party and very first secretary of state for the Department for Energy & Climate Change (DECC) gave his perspective on the run down to Paris, the role of politicians and the public at an evening of discussion from the crypt of St Pauls Cathedral hosted by Baroness Bryony Worthington.

The only word for it is chutzpah: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call for European Jews to flee to Israel from the claws of a newly rampant anti-Semitism that is supposedly sweeping Europe.

The deadline for two long weeks of climate negotiations in Peru had already passed when the man who had presided over the entire event Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's environment minister, announced the Lima Call to Climate Action.

In the five years since global leaders met in Copenhagen to discuss climate change, a lot has changed, and too much has stayed the same. In the past five years, more than 650 million people have been affected and more than 112,000 lives lost as a result of weather-related disasters.

Top military experts and government institutions like the U.S. Department of Defense and National Intelligence Council warn that climate destabilization threatens our national security, yet global emissions just keep going up.

My bike's name is Cerise -- French, of course, meaning cherry red. I call Cerise my "moving meditation," with no distractions, no radio, no cell phones or passengers or coffee cups balancing on the console. Just me, Cerise and my skirt.

What if the multinationals, in the same way and by the same principles, had evaluated how much value states give back to their citizens, contribute to the welfare of the planet, and advance global welfare, and optimized taxes based on that?

"We believe that carbon neutrality not only benefits the climate, the Copenhageners will gain a lot in terms of increased growth and life quality as well. Cleaner air, less noise and a greener city will give Copenhageners better daily lives and create more jobs."

The Island President stars Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected president of the Maldives. Until Nasheed was deposed in what his supporters describe as a coup, he was a leading voice in the fight to stop global warming and rising seas which threaten his homeland.

Does the Durban Platform really "set a new course for the global fight against climate change"? Maybe, but it will require a whole lot of work by the likes of the United States and China to keep the world on that course.

The big question in Durban is whether an extraordinarily obstructive Obama administration is days away from killing this process and burying its corpse next to the Doha round of trade talks.
The stakes really are that high.